How to Repair Smoke Damage
Smoke damage to walls, ceilings, floors, and carpet is not just unpleasant to smell, but it is not fun to clean either. The degree of the smoke damage will determine the amount of repair your home will need. Types of damages could include smoke odor, soot, charring, blistering, and bubbling.
- Before you begin to assess the
damages after a home fire, you need to put on protective gear. This
means covering your eyes with goggles, wearing thick gloves, boots,
and a mask. These are essential to make sure you are safe with the
flying soot and smoke smell. - Look around on the walls and
ceilings for black streaks and marks, this is damage from the smoke.
The black you see is soot, if the wall appears charred that means
that the paint and possibly the dry wall was actually on fire. To
clean the smoke damage from the walls, you need large sponges, rags
to clean with, at least two buckets, water, and a cleaner called
trisodium phosphate or TSP. Make sure you have your protective gear
on because TSP is harsh if it gets on the skin. - Take one of your buckets and
mix one gallon of water for every tablespoon of TSP. So if you are
mixing three gallons, you would mix three tablespoons of TSP. Use a
sponge to dip in the mixture and wipe where you see the black marks
and press hard and fast with the sponge. Use your other bucket and
fill it with clean water. Take a clean sponge and dip it in and wipe
over where you cleaned to rinse the TSP off. This may need to be
repeated depending how much black is there. If the black smoke is
not totally removed, you may need to prime the walls and repaint. - Carpets normally need to be pulled
up and replaced since it is hard to get the smoke smell out once it
has settled. Depending on your furniture, you may be able to have it
cleaned professionally to see if the smoke smell can be removed.